Category: publishing

Iran’s culture minister says writers must censor their work if they want to be published. “It is a clear violation of the law to give an excessive portrayal of a man and woman’s private relationships … and subject our youth and adults to descriptions of intercourse,”

On the eve of publishing a new biography of Louis XIV’s mistress, the volume is withdrawn. It seems that part of the book was based on a document long debunked as a hoax…

Bloomsbury, the publishing house behind the Harry Potter phenomenon, is facing a growing revolt from some of its leading authors upset by its “obsession” with JK Rowling.

Memoirist James Frey has a novel coming out next month, and it’s a safe bet that Oprah Winfrey won’t be selecting it for her book club. Frey’s fudging of facts in his best-selling memoir got him in trouble in the publishing world. So his plan for the new book? Promotion in “non-traditional” venues…

There are 12 finalists for the James Tait Black Memorial prizes. “The prizes are the country’s oldest literary awards, comprising two £10,000 awards for books published in 2007, one for novels and one for biographies. The winner’s purse was increased from £3,000 two years ago.”

“For all the hand-wringing over whether Wikipedia is a legitimate source for completing college assignments, some professors are quietly incorporating it into their classrooms and even their research. Others, noting features of the Web site that contribute to inaccuracies and shortchange the value of expertise, are building variations on the model that are more amenable to academics and to peer review.”

“As a founding editor of n+1, the literary magazine whose vocal fan base belies its twice-yearly 7,500-copy print run, Keith Gessen and his colleagues have assailed other publications they believe have squandered their eminence (The New Republic) or never merited it (McSweeney’s and anything else associated with the writer Dave Eggers). And the idea of literary fame is central to “All the Sad Young Literary Men.”

“In 2007, a whopping 400,000 books were published or distributed in the United States, up from 300,000 in 2006, according to the industry tracker Bowker, which attributed the sharp rise to the number of print-on-demand books and reprints of out-of-print titles. In short, everyone has a story — and everyone wants to tell it. Fewer people may be reading, but everywhere you turn, Americans are sounding their barbaric yawps over the roofs of the world.”

“Many libraries began digitizing books a decade ago to preserve them. Funding from Google allows the 28 libraries it’s working with to cut their digitizing costs because they don’t have to pay for scanning the books Google wants to include in Book Search. More than 1 million rare or fragile books have been digitized through the Google-Michigan partnership since it began in 2004, with an estimated 6 million to go.”

“To authors, the text is sacrosanct, and any accompanying visuals – whether on the cover or the page – are there to serve it. To artists, the text is only one of several considerations: colour, shape, design, texture and technical innovation are at least as important. That’s why authors can be less than thrilled when a Matisse, Picasso or Damien Hirst collaborates on an illustrated edition. The problem isn’t so much competing egos as conflicting agendas.”